One on One
by certs-up
Summary: Sequel to "An Evening in Stern Bild." Over afternoon tea, Barnaby learns more about Yuri's past with Albert Maverick, as well as Yuri's power. Their dinner together is interrupted by a villain too much like Lunatic for comfort. Yuri-centric gen.
1. Breaking the Ice

It bothered Barnaby's conscience a bit. This was Yuri Petrov, after all. The man who had never failed to support him in his researches, even though he sometimes could offer only moral support. The man who had lost his job for political reasons and had let Kotetsu drag him along with the group as a sort of consolation prize, when he'd looked as if he'd much rather go home and lick his wounds in solitude.

The man who'd saved Kotetsu and Kaede, in the process revealing a NEXT power that he'd clearly prefer to keep to himself, and who had practically collapsed with guilt after—in what had to have been a moment of extreme stress—he'd raised a hand to Kaede.

He'd smiled a lot, later that evening, when they were leaning on railings or letting the breeze blow fountain mist onto them. And that was, Barnaby realized, what had made him really begin to wonder about Yuri Petrov. Not those later, milder smiles: he'd looked thoughtful and contented and maybe a bit wistful, and if Barnaby had never seen him before that evening, he'd have thought nothing of it. However, Barnaby had seen a good bit of him, between court appearances and asking for assistance and simply passing him in the hall from time to time. Judge Petrov had smiled, then. But it was always a cat-that-got-the-canary smile, not merely knowing but crafty. Seeing him at liberty and with an unprecedented simplicity of expression had, ironically, aroused Barnaby's suspicions.

"Fire just like Lunatic's." Those had been Kaede's words, and Yuri had found the description disturbing. Who wouldn't? Probably anyone who had incendiary-type NEXT powers felt a little uneasy at the possibility of being connected with Lunatic. It was hard to think that Yuri Petrov's face underlay that fish-like mask with its staring eyes. It was easier to think that someone with a power similar to Lunatic's could provide a lead, if only an implicit one: a hint at some weakness that could be exploited, the beginning of a trail that would lead to his lair and his capture.

Barnaby wanted to know more about Lunatic, and the nearest he could come was learning more about Yuri Petrov.

But he had another reason for wanting to learn more about Yuri, and that was what Yuri had said about his relationship with Albert Maverick. Maverick had had some sort of hold on him and some use for him, some reason for leapfrogging his advancement beyond what was commensurate with his years. Perhaps Yuri knew what Maverick had planned; perhaps he only suspected. Barnaby told himself he wanted more insight into the process that had led to his own advancement, to his status as a Hero and, in essence, as Maverick's protégé. But the truth of the matter was, he'd found a fellow survivor, someone else Maverick had exploited. When he had considered himself his own man, he had been content to spend his life alone—well, until Kotetsu had fended off Lunatic and punched his way into Barnaby's heart. But his attachment to Kotetsu hadn't had that underlying sick feeling of need that came with knowing he had been used. His love for his parents, his longing to avenge them, his desire simply to learn the truth about the past: to Maverick it had all been a tool, a wrench for dialing up public sympathy, a chamois to polish the reputation of Hero TV.

Maybe Yuri wouldn't sympathize. Barnaby had trusted Maverick, literally like a parent, and the shock of that betrayal still left him feeling lost and naked. Yuri apparently had never trusted Maverick; perhaps he'd laugh at Barnaby's naiveté, or smile that crafty smile and ask why on earth a man with fingers in as many pies as Maverick would have fostered a child, unless it was to grind him into pie filling.

And yet this was the same Yuri who had trusted Kaede with what was unquestionably a dangerous NEXT power; had patiently coached her in using it under what had to have been terrifying conditions for both of them; had cheered her with a flower when her father let her down and tactfully made sure she didn't release his power in the wake of that encounter. There was a lot of decent in Yuri, at least where a certain ten-year-old was concerned.

Barnaby found himself wondering if Lunatic liked flowers, then had a surreal fantasy of Yuri Petrov presenting Lunatic with a huge bouquet of white roses, which Lunatic incinerated along with the ex-judge. No, that really was absurd. Lunatic's sense of justice might be devoid of both sense and justice, but as a rule he targeted only murderers. Smirking on the job probably didn't fall under the aegis of sin.

One of the bad things about having voluntarily spent his life alone was that Barnaby had very little concept of how to approach someone socially. If Kotetsu wanted to get closer to somebody, he'd just do it. Kotetsu was amazing—if annoying—that way, and if Barnaby had wanted to get together with Yuri _and_ Kotetsu, he had no doubt that Kotetsu would have been able to handle it, even if it involved grabbing Yuri by the sleeve and physically dragging him somewhere. But Kotetsu was back in Oriental Town having a better life, and in any case, Barnaby didn't particularly want him along. Kotetsu wasn't one of Maverick's tools, or subjects, or whatever one wanted to call the experience that made common ground between him and Yuri Petrov.

Maybe that was enough after all. He remembered the bitterness, the _envy_ in Yuri's voice that cut through the background hubbub at Pizza Out: "I needed to know more than he cared to safeguard with positive reinforcement alone." Yuri had been forced to keep that to himself, evidently for a long time—at the very least through law school and his career at the Justice Bureau. Maybe he wanted to tell as much as Barnaby wanted to hear.

* * *

><p>"Who was that, dear?"<p>

"Barnaby Brooks Jr.," Yuri said, staring somewhat blankly at his phone.

"The new Hero! Goodness, isn't your father ever around to take his calls?"

"It was for me, Mama. He was asking me ... to tea."

"That's very kind of him. I'm sure you'll have a good time."

_That's one of us._ The invitation had left Yuri feeling as nonplussed as Barnaby had sounded. The poor fellow obviously wasn't comfortable extending social invitations, which was to be expected, given that literally more than half of his existence had been monopolized by pursuit of a red herring manufactured by Albert Maverick. From the moment that sag-jowled string-puller had implanted him among the Heroes like a new memory, Yuri had detested the man he thought of as Maverick's little blond pet, and the more he learned about him, the more reasons he had for doing so. In addition to being an attaché—no, a favorite—of Albert Maverick, Barnaby Brooks Jr. was a conceited, pretentious, pushy know-it-all. He'd quickly earned not only Yuri's scorn but that of his colleagues-all but his partner, Wild Tiger, who was himself known to be a bit of a flake.

Yuri's hard feelings hadn't softened until Barnaby's life story became ratings fodder. At that point the whole affair had begun to smell fishier than a shark's gullet. It hadn't exactly taken the edge off Yuri's envy-it was only human to prefer being manipulated with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist-but it had terminated his occasional fantasies about making an incense stick of Brooks's trim figure. Maverick was burning his little blond cat's-paw at both ends as it was.

Afternoon tea. Yuri was trying to imagine visiting Barnaby Brooks Jr.'s digs as an actual, invited guest rather than an accident that Wild Tiger dragged in. He tried picturing them sitting on the window seat or the split-level floor and failed, mostly because he couldn't stop thinking about young Brooks's reason for inviting him: he wanted to talk about Albert Maverick.

Of all damned things. Of all damnable people. Maverick was a sickness that had infected Yuri's life, a parasite that had plopped itself into the void his father left. Much as Yuri would have liked to fool himself into thinking he was scarred, the truth was that he was _galled._ Maverick had been one galling bastard, a man of unmitigated gall, and now it seemed even a fiery death wasn't enough to get Yuri free of him, because Barnaby Brooks Jr. wanted to _discuss_ the man.

Yuri hadn't snapped his phone shut in disgust. Even while he was thinking that Brooks was an idiot who didn't have the sense to leave ashes to ashes, he'd listened. Brooks was barely more than an acquaintance, part of the milieu that had unceremoniously kicked him to the curb once his tormentor-cum-protector was out of the way. He was a reminder of the massive farce that was Hero TV, a sorry institution that Yuri was not at all sorry to leave behind. He was an annoying know-it-all who didn't let people finish their sentences, a tow-headed pretty boy who, for all his pretty talk about being a hero of justice, had spent most of his life honing himself for a motive no better than revenge. Just thinking about him gave Yuri a headache. _Why did I agree to this, again?_

The answer—as Yuri had to admit—was mostly that, whatever there was to hold against the man, he really wasn't to blame for the morass of immorality that Yuri had been immersed in for all those years. Besides, Barnaby had asked about Yuri's preferences in tea. It was a mere creature comfort, and it shouldn't have made a hair of difference given the context, but there had been something oddly satisfying about telling him, "You can't go wrong with Earl Grey."

"Yuri? Could you move this chair a little further forward to cover this stain I can't get out of the carpet?"

Yuri thought about how the stain had gotten there—it involved broken glass and his scalp, maybe a year and a half ago—pocketed his phone, and pushed up a fallen sleeve.

**Author's note**

Astute readers may notice some divergences from canon. _Tiger & Bunny: The Beginning_ indicates that Yuri joined the Justice Bureau around the time of Barnaby's first day as a Hero. Barnaby's main room actually doesn't have space to accommodate a couch, never mind a coffee table, near the window seat because of the sunken floor. (In the unlikely event I finish the series of stories I have in my head, the couch will be gone by the time Barnaby resumes his job as Hero.)


	2. Tea for Two

"Yuri!" Barnaby extended his hand with his trademark smile, which Yuri returned to the best of his ability as he crossed the threshold. "I'm glad you could make it. Thanks for coming."

"Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate the change of scenery."

"Have you been busy job searching?"

"For the past couple of days, I've been busy moving furniture, actually. In every room in the house, I think." Yuri touched his lower back with an authentic wince. "I don't generally compare myself to others, but I've been envying your Hundred Power."

"Ow." Barnaby grimaced in sympathy. "It sounds like you're the perfect candidate to give an impression of my new furnishings." He led Yuri to the opposite end of the main room. "I realized I may be having guests now, so I've started setting up to entertain." He sounded both self-conscious and pleased with himself.

A couch and a coffee table now faced the picture window. Yuri ran his hand over the top, then an arm, of the former. "Leather." He performed the same gesture on a side and the back. "And not just where you touch. Classy. I approve."

Barnaby's smile broadened. "Thank you."

"And that's a fine coffee table." The table was essentially two heavy glass shelves—not even framed, just supported by gold-toned legs. "Very modern. Good solid look to it."

"Thanks. Go on, please sit down."

Yuri sank onto the couch with a grateful sigh. "This. Is. Excellent. I suppose I'm tired enough to be a bit biased, but I'm impressed."

"Thanks," said Barnaby, taking a seat at the other end. "I'll probably add a few more things eventually. May I ask why you've been moving furniture for two days?"

"Mama thought the house needed it, and I finally had time to do something besides work and sleep." This in fact covered only the first day of rearranging. The second day had come about after his mother woke up in a panic because NOTHING WAS WHERE IT BELONGED and Papa wasn't to be found and would Yuri please please please set things right?

Never mind comparing himself to someone with a Hundred Power; Yuri had been comparing himself to someone with a sane mother. He wasn't stacking up too well on that front, either.

"You live with your mother?"

"We share a domicile. I'm not sure whether it's more accurate to say that she lives with me, since I'm the breadwinner—or was, until recently—or that I live with her, since the house is in her name. Perhaps it's simplest to say that I live with her."

"She must appreciate having you there to help out."

"She's really quite self-sufficient. Which is just as well—I worked very long hours. I'd do yard work on weekends and odd things she couldn't do, like changing lightbulbs, whenever I was there to work them in."

"She can't change lightbulbs?"

"Perhaps there's a device that would enable her to do so, but it's simpler to get me to do some things. She uses a wheelchair."

"Oh," said Barnaby, looking a bit at a loss. "I guess she really does need somebody to help if she wants to move furniture."

Yuri nodded. "But as I said, she's mostly very self-sufficient. She keeps house beautifully by herself. The kitchen's been modified so she can cook and wash dishes."

Barnaby had never previously contemplated how a wheelchair user might keep house and finally decided he wasn't being too nosy when he asked, "What does that entail?"

"Sinks at her level, cooking surface she can reach, cabinets with lazy Susan things inside them . . . A lot of it's side by side with conventional fixtures so those of us who use them standing don't get backaches."

"'Those of us'? So someone else uses them?"

"I was speaking broadly. The kitchen was remodeled with all the handicap-accessible elements a long time ago; I think Aunt Yuliya and I are the only people besides Mama who've used it since."

"Would you care for some tea?"

"That would be excellent."

Feeling rather self-conscious, Yuri took advantage of the solitude for a quick glance at his ever-present pocket mirror. He'd had to give his face a particularly exacting coat of concealer thanks to an adventure involving Mama's fist to his gut and his eye socket's subsequent encounter with her chair arm. The bruise was fading, but even a few days after the fact he still had a visible shiner. Sans makeup, it was in fact almost as conspicuous as his scar. He was reassured to see that at the moment he looked fine. He'd dressed casually, much as he did at home, with a loose-fitting silk shirt—albeit tucked in as well as buttoned in front and at the cuffs. The pockets of his lightweight slacks weren't as accommodating as those of the suit pants he'd always worn to work, but there was more than enough room for the mirror he returned to its nook, and for a social call, he scarcely needed the accoutrements his job had at times required.

There were, at least, some physical conveniences to being unemployed.

Yuri had expected cups or mugs with hot liquid and, if he was lucky, some kind of sweetening being made available. He had _not_ expected Barnaby to return with a two-tiered plate of finger foods, and then to reappear with a tray containing the makings of a proper afternoon tea for two. Yuri watched in surprise that slowly turned to delight as Barnaby brought a kettle and poured water into the teapot to set the tea steeping.

"I hope I'm getting most of this right," Barnaby confessed as he took his seat again. "I've never seen afternoon tea served."

"Neither have I," Yuri replied, to Barnaby's evident surprise. "I'm flattered you'd go to so much trouble for me."

"It seemed the thing to do. These are almond chicken salad sandwiches, and those are cucumber mint, and—"

It might not have been a feast fit for a king, but—besides exceeding Yuri's admittedly modest expectations—it brought together the desirable elements of hospitality: good food, attractive setting and accoutrements, attentive host. Yuri found that the ambience more than compensated for the lack of honey or syrup, and even for plain granulated sugar by the spoonful standing in for "One lump or two?" (He had four, and Barnaby evidently thought no less of him for it.) Yuri found himself making an exception to his dislike of idle chat; here and now, it was simply, plainly _pleasant_ to talk about nothing while polishing off a pot of tea and a double plate of sandwiches and sweet-topped scones. The napkins were cloth, the view was relaxing, and the couch cushions were so soft they threatened to devour him.

The empty sandwich plate had been cleared away, and a second pot of tea was resting in a cozy when conversation turned serious.

"So," Barnaby finally said, legs drawn up, not looking at Yuri. "Albert Maverick."

Yuri was stretched at full length, legs barely avoiding the coffee table, and he nodded. "I'm not sure what I can tell you, really. A lot of it is ... Maverick played them close to the vest. I can't prove much. And I never had much direct contact with him, particularly once I was graduated from law school."

"I suppose anything would be more than what I know. How did you know him?"

"My father worked for Apollon Media. Albert Maverick was producer for Hero TV back then. I'd met him, but I hadn't really thought about him much. He came to Papa's funeral—well, so did a lot of people." Yuri was sorting through details, wondering just how much he cared, or dared, to reveal. Linking his scars, even chronologically, to his father's death was Not A Good Idea; Barnaby didn't need to know that he'd attended the funeral in bandages, and that his mother hadn't attended at all, as she'd been hospitalized and heavily sedated. On the other hand, omitting one detail would just make things too complicated. "He didn't wait very long to get his hooks into me. Aunt Yuliya came to live with us for a while after Papa died; I was only fourteen, and Mama was badly injured. And—to be honest—not in her right mind. She never has been, since. She always thinks he's off at work—or she's talking with him, when there's no one there."

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you." Yuri was looking at his hands, if only because they were there; the world around him would go largely unobserved anyway, displaced by memories. "Mr. Maverick came to visit, ostensibly to see how we were doing. Not just ostensibly. He got some lovely, lovely extortion fodder when he realized just how crazy poor Mama was. He basically ..." Yuri had to pause to catch his breath, even so many years later. "He pointed out that as man of the house it was my responsibility to carry out my father's ideals by starting toward a career with the Justice Bureau. And if I failed, I'd have proven that I was unworthy, and he personally would see that my mother was put into ... more competent hands."

Yuri didn't look, but he could hear Barnaby drawing in a long, slow breath. Finally: "Yuri, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened to you."

"So." Yuri would have liked to acknowledge the commiseration but simply didn't have the words. "It was do as Maverick said or see my mother institutionalized—which of course also would have meant I'd end up in foster care or an orphanage, because I don't think Aunt Yuliya would have wanted to take me in. She was willing to help out for a while, but raising a teenager—I can't blame her for wanting to get on with her life instead. Anyway, I'd often thought about a career with the Justice Bureau, maybe as a prosecutor. It pissed me off that following my own wishes also played into Maverick's hands, but not playing into his hands would have dire consequences, and I wanted Mama to be able to stay home. I did what was expected of me. I made good grades, somehow. Looking back on it all, I don't know how. I had eating disorders, sleep disorders. I got into some fights—even got suspended from school." Yuri didn't mention that the fights were precipitated when someone teased him for wearing makeup, and that he'd only once been careless enough to lose his temper on school grounds.

Barnaby nodded. "It must have all been pretty rough."

"It was. Maverick kept tabs on me. He made it look like ... avuncular concern, I suppose. I'll give him credit: he really did want me to succeed, and he could be accommodating when it suited his purpose. One time he phoned me when I was studying for midterms, and _that_ was such a distraction that I actually told him so and asked if I could just e-mail him regular reports on my academic progress, instead of getting rattled by a phone call when I was trying to study. He was very obliging. He still came to visit now and then—nosy bastard—but he was willing to work around my school schedule."

Barnaby was simply shaking his head. "I had no idea."

Yuri waved off his concern. "It's not as if you could have done anything even if you'd known. You would have been a child then. Anyway, I got admitted to college, finished that degree, got admitted to Stern Bild Law School ... that was damn close. I made the deadline and got rejected anyway, because they get more applicants than they can accept and do things by lottery. I thought I'd have a breakdown, because I absolutely _could not_ go to law school anywhere else, not with Mama to take care of, and for once I swallowed my pride and phoned that bastard and all but begged him to help. Which he did. He didn't even use the event to get more leverage, he just said he'd take care of it, and a week or so later I got a letter of acceptance. I think I hid somewhere and cried for a couple of hours."

"Yuri, I'm sorry. I ..." Barnaby sighed. "So that's what you meant when you said he made it possible for you to go to law school. I'd wondered if he'd paid for some of it."

"Oh, hell no. I never got a cent from him. Papa had set aside money for me to go to college, and I'd had jobs when I was in high school and college—anyway, I managed. I'd have taken in renters and lived on ramen before I'd ask Albert Maverick for money on top of everything else."

"I don't blame you," Barnaby said softly. "You've got a lot to be angry about."

"I've got a fucking lost adolescence to be angry about," Yuri said dryly. "Anyway. I worked part-time jobs and summer jobs for the Justice Bureau all through high school and college and law school. I finished my law degree and got a full-time job clerking in Criminal. Then somebody over in Tort died, and I got shifted to that position, doing comparable duties there, and ... after that was when things started getting interesting."

"Oh?"

"There was an assistant prosecutor named Inez Sanchez. I knew her slightly. I didn't learn the details until quite a while after the fact, but apparently Albert Maverick offered her a job with Apollon Media. He was CEO by that time—not someone who's normally going out and soliciting lawyers off the street to join the corporate world. Mrs. Sanchez made the mistake of turning him down. A couple of weeks later she had a breakdown—basically just went crazy and had to be dragged out by Security. There wasn't any sort of competitive process for filling her slot—I was just put there. I can't tell you how pissed her superior was about that."

"I guess it wasn't an auspicious beginning."

"It wasn't. Oddly enough, we hit if off pretty well anyway. I think for a long time he suspected I was somebody's buttboy or something like that, but I learned fast and did good work, and that went a long way with him. And about a year later, Maverick called him and made the same offer he'd extended to Inez Sanchez."

Barnaby gave Yuri a quick sideward glance. "What happened?"

"Best valued his sanity and took him up on it. That was his name—Best. He went by A. T. when he didn't just use his last name. By that time I wasn't too surprised when I got shifted into Best's slot as prosecutor. It was something similar after another year; one of the judges quit her job and relocated, and I got a judgeship out of it."

"And you think Albert Maverick was behind all this?"

"Barnaby, I can't imagine anything else. It was certainly someone. The things that I'm describing just don't _happen,_ normally. If a regular line or staff position comes open, there's a job posting and applications and interviews and so forth. And for judgeships—they're appointive, and they don't get filled instantly, because there's a review process for positions with that sort of responsibility. But with the positions I got, after my first one—nothing. It was just, 'Petrov, this is your job now.' I don't know why anyone other than Maverick would have been behind it."

Barnaby nodded. "So that's how you got to be where you were when I came along?"

"Not quite. That was an inferior-level judgeship, not the one Judge Ross held." Yuri rubbed his fingertips together thoughtfully. "I never heard a bad word about Judge Ross. Never. Until he was brought up on child molestation charges."

Barnaby nodded. "I remember that. It was a big scandal."

"Yes. That was ... sad. There were three boys who came forward, remember?"

"I think so. I didn't really follow the case."

Yuri rubbed his temples. "I did. Now I wish I hadn't, but I did. The dates. They remembered when ... when things started. I don't mean the boys remembered the actual dates, but investigators were able to reconstruct—it was the Monday after a big picnic, it was the day before someone's birthday party. Things like that. The first one said Judge Ross had approached him ... the same day I started my first real job for the Justice Bureau in '72."

Barnaby looked at Yuri steadily now. Yuri directed an unfocused gaze at the cityscape out the window. "The second boy's experiences started a couple of years later. On the day I got Inez Sanchez's ... Barnaby?"

Barnaby had risen. "Sorry, Yuri. I ... would you like a beer? I think I need one."

Yuri shook his head. "No, thanks, but help yourself."

Barnaby soon returned with a beer; it wasn't a label that Yuri recognized, but then, he had no interest. "Sorry," Barnaby repeated. "I, uh, I think I'll be okay if you go on."

Yuri nodded. "Not much more, I'm afraid. Boy number three. His experiences dated to a couple of years later, the date I was appointed to that first judgeship. I thought I'd _collapse_ when I made all the connections." Yuri's breathing was growing labored, and he tipped his head back to look at the ceiling. "People don't start molesting little boys to celebrate career advances for someone they barely know by sight. All I could think was _What the hell?_ Once I knew about Maverick's power, things started falling into place, but—"

Barnaby took several swallows of beer. "That must have been horrible. It's ... horrible. So ... I mean, I wonder, did he really ...?"

"That's the problem, isn't it? How much in the way of memories did Maverick implant where? Did he make up all of it from whole cloth—torment three innocents _and_ get an innocent man sent up? Or was the molestation genuine and Maverick just massaged the dates? Ross admitted to all of it—you do remember that part, don't you?"

Barnaby shook his head, then took another pull at the beer. "I didn't really keep up with the case."

"Ross confessed. And ... maybe he actually ... and maybe he didn't. Maybe Maverick implanted everything ... Whatever he did, the purpose was putting me into Ross's old job, and he used those dates to send a message. And even if that doesn't make me any kind of accessory—I certainly knew nothing about it, but I can't exactly exonerate myself, either. Terrible things happened to people, and I benefited."

"Yuri, I'm sorry. This is horrible."

"Isn't it. I'm sorry, too. Maverick ... was important to you. I hated him with so much vitriol I don't know how my body ever held it, but I'd never want anyone innocent to suffer. I wouldn't ... I wish you didn't want to know these things. You've lost someone who meant a great deal to you, and I'm just making it all the more painful."

"It's painful to learn that Mr. Maverick could have done things like this, but I don't know how you can think it's worse than learning how he used me, when I believed he was looking after me out of a sense of duty and affection."

Yuri sighed. "Yes. I'm sure he treated you worse than anyone else. He groomed you to serve his purposes, and when he'd achieved them, he was ready to—sorry. You don't need this."

"What about you, Yuri? If Rotwang hadn't developed those robots, I never would have learned Mr. Maverick's real purpose for me. Did he ever hint at his plans for you?"

Yuri shook his head. "But think about it. He put me on a calculated promotional path into a position related to your activities. I was in that senior judgeship just long enough to more or less know what I was doing when Maverick got you approved as a Hero. As Hero administrator and as liaison to the council, I contributed to decisions on actions the Heroes would take. In the judgeship proper, I determined culpability and fines for the Heroes specifically." He gave Barnaby a keen look. "Did you ever think about why you were paired with Wild Tiger, when none of the other Heroes were shifted into partnerships under the reorganization? Or why it was Wild Tiger specifically?"

"I've thought a _lot_ about why Kotetsu was my partner. I never wanted a partner—it's my nature to work alone, and it infuriated me. It seemed like a slap in the face. I was the first hero who had to have a sidekick tied to him, as if I couldn't do my job myself."

Yuri nodded. "Exactly. And because it was so vital that you do your job properly and make a good impression, you were paired with a Hero who had a notable history of racking up damage fines, disregarding directions, and generally being a loose cannon. He would have been the perfect scapegoat if you did something stupid. I was in a position to attribute your carelessness to him, if I'd been pressed to do so."

Barnaby slowly turned his head toward Yuri, eyes widening. "Would you have done that?"

"To keep my mother out of an institution? I'm sorry to say I would have, although I'll admit, it doesn't reflect very well on me as ... a public servant."

Barnaby sighed and put his hand to his forehead.

"And of course it needn't have stopped there. I could have found a way of exonerating you of pretty much anything. Ditto for any of Maverick's thugs if they'd come to trial for, say, assault with a deadly weapon. Like a poker."

"Stop being so cold-blooded about it."

"If I'm cold-blooded, Maverick was a glacier—cold and hard and slow-moving, but utterly resistless. Perhaps he had other plans for me. We'll probably never know. I'm sure he wasn't foolish enough to keep a flowchart with my name on it somewhere."

Barnaby sighed. "Time for another beer. Sure you won't have one?"

"Positive, thanks."

"Or something else? That tea's probably cold by now." Barnaby reached for the cozy-covered pot, but Yuri waved him off.

"I'm fine. Go get your beer."

While Barnaby did so, Yuri poured himself another cup of tea and sampled it. He liked it warmer, but it was palatable, particularly after a generous addition of sugar. His thoughts alternated between mentally replaying parts of their conversation and wondering why he was being so forthcoming. He didn't speak of these things. He never spoke of these things. He never had. Well, of course he hadn't heretofore, but with Maverick gone, part of his world had turned upside-down, and now its contents were spilling out, as if he were sicking up something monstrous. And Barnaby wanted to _hear_ this?

Yes, after what he'd been through, Barnaby probably did. People always like to know that someone else has problems.

Yuri had sipped a good bit of the cupful when he realized that Barnaby had been gone for considerably longer than should have been required to get a beer, even if he'd made a detour to the lobby seeking more congenial company for consuming it. Yuri went to the doorway where he'd seen his host vanish and found the kitchen, predictably spotless and spare, with Barnaby leaning against a counter and gazing at an unopened bottle. Yuri guessed he'd been that way most of the time he'd been gone. Condensation was trickling down the sides of the bottle; a few drops glistened on the countertop.

"Barnaby?" Yuri stayed at the doorway and kept his voice low. "Would you rather I left?"

After some seconds Barnaby said, "No. Though if this is how I'm going to host you, I suppose you'd rather go."

"You've been a gracious host. Come on—if you're going to stare at nothing, you might as well sit down while doing it. Do you want to open that after all?"

To Yuri's surprise, Barnaby activated his Hundred Power and, with incongruous delicacy, wrenched the cap off barehanded. Yuri couldn't help wincing at the sight, though Barnaby seemed unaffected. When he'd made no move away from the counter—or to drink the beer—after nearly half a minute, Yuri sighed and strode forward. He didn't particularly like touching people, but he liked watching a glowing blue screen of death even less and put an arm around Barnaby's shoulders. "Let's go sit down."

Physical contact got Barnaby back to the couch, but it was a long time and perhaps a quarter of a bottle of beer before he spoke again.

"Do you think there are other people he used the same way?"

Yuri glanced toward him uncomfortably, then looked away; he drew in a breath, but let it out without speaking.

Barnaby grimaced. "Go on. I can take it."

"You've already had to take so much," Yuri murmured. "Maverick was a shrewd man and a powerful one. He wouldn't have put all his eggs into one basket, so to speak; after all, you might have died or become disabled in the course of your work, or through pure bad luck—a car accident, food poisoning, whatever. That said, however: He could plant memories whenever he wished. He didn't have to be aware of individuals with motives for becoming Heroes; he could simply manufacture the motives as needed. So my guess is that he was aware of others who could take your place, but he wasn't actively controlling anyone toward that end. And if that's the case, those people's memories probably haven't been altered in any way.

"On the other hand, we know you aren't the only person whose memories he altered—think of that whole ghastly mess that went down when he framed a murder on Kotetsu and used the Heroes and Hero TV as his tools. Come to think of it, I wonder why he didn't invite me to that particular ... wine tasting. It wasn't like him to forget details. I suppose he considered me on a sufficiently tight leash that it didn't matter what I suspected. Bastard." Yuri leaned back against the cushions. "But it's not the sort of thing we really have any means of ascertaining. I'd think one wouldn't know if his memories had been altered. It's not something that even occurs to most people. Of course, now that Maverick's crimes have come to light—I mean, the most egregious ones—maybe people that he influenced are beginning to suspect. Still ... how would anyone know what to question, where to begin?"

"I know I'm not the most credible source," Barnaby said quietly, "but I do remember some things. _Really_ remember some things. Mr. Maverick implanted a memory of Jake Martinez as my parents' killer, including the memory of an Ourobouros tattoo on his hand—a tattoo that it turned out he didn't have. After I saw a video that showed Jake's hand without the tattoo, I knew something was wrong with my memories. I kept remembering different people killing my parents—Aunt Samantha, Kotetsu ... even myself. I suspected everybody, and it was driving me crazy. I'm sure that occurred because on a subconscious level I realized that the memories I had didn't belong there, and I was trying to find the real memory. Someone who knows what he did might be having a similar experience—_if_ he implanted a memory very different from the truth."

Yuri had been watching Barnaby keenly during this recital. "So the memories that Maverick implanted weren't the last word. A person could, in theory, recover the real memories himself?"

"In theory. I remembered Kotetsu even though Maverick thought he had completely blocked that—but it was because Kotetsu prompted me, not something I did on my own." Barnaby leaned back, closing his eyes. "I never thought that stupid nickname would actually be good for something, but it saved Kotetsu's life."

Yuri blinked, eyes widening. "Barnaby?"

"I was going to kill him. We were only supposed to capture him, but I was going to kill him, because he wouldn't stop pretending to be ... who he actually was. That was when he called me Bunny. After he tried a lot of other things that should have made me remember he was my real partner, he called me Bunny, and suddenly ... he wasn't the criminal who'd killed Aunt Samantha."

Yuri sat silent for several breaths. "I'd ... had no idea. I knew the two of you fought on Brox Bridge, but I hadn't appreciated..."

"And maybe Maverick wanted him dead." Barnaby's voice was flat. "Kotetsu knew Jake Martinez hadn't killed my parents, and somehow Maverick wasn't able to make him forget that. I guess it would have been convenient if I avenged another personal loss."

"Yes, I'm sure I would have found a way of acquitting you of anything serious—in the unlikely event the case even entered the judicial system." Yuri sighed, eyes closed. "This is all utterly dreadful. It's almost making me glad I lost that job. It was tainted."

"But without a job ... are you doing okay, financially?"

Yuri nodded. "I have some savings and some investments. Mama has an independent income that pays for a good bit of her needs. We're all right. I know I should be looking for a job, but ... I just can't. I think I'm happier than I've been in my life, doing nothing and able to get away with it for the first time since I was a child. I've never had a vacation, Barnaby, not as an adult. Sometimes I've taken a few days off, but the pressure was always there, the possibility of Maverick's voice on the phone, wanting a favor ... no, giving an order I'd have no choice but to obey. Things aren't perfect now—" (_Here, let me show you my black eye_) "—but I'm my own man in a way I simply haven't been before, and I can't bring myself to hand that over to someone else, not just yet."

Barnaby smiled. "I'm happy for you. Sounds like you need some downtime, too."

"Yes. And I've taken so much of your time now. I doubt there's anything else helpful I could tell you about Albert Maverick—has it been helpful?"

Barnaby nodded. "Yes. It has. It's funny; I guess I've lived alone for so long I naturally _want_ to be alone, but when I realized I'd been used practically all my life ... I wanted there to be someone else. Anybody can sympathize, but I wanted someone who _knew._ It means a lot, Yuri."

Yuri couldn't stop himself from returning that wistful smile. "I'm glad, then. I don't particularly enjoy discussing my personal circumstances, but ... it's rather like your personal records with the Justice Bureau, 'the real ones,' as you put it. You deserve to know."

"Could I ask you about something else?"

"Go ahead."

"Your power."


	3. The End of an End Table

Yuri sighed and put a hand to his forehead. "Honestly, Barnaby, what about it?"

"Everything that I know is from what Kaede told me. She said you do fire like Lunatic's."

Yuri glared at him. "Three people learn about my power, and now _all_ of you have connected me to Lunatic. Do you know what Kotetsu said? He said, and I quote, 'I wish Lunatic could meet you.'"

Barnaby stared and finally stammered, "Why?"

"That was my reaction exactly." _Right down to the timing and intonation, which is a little creepy._ "Apparently he thought we'd ... bond, I suppose, over having the same power. Barnaby, when you met Kotetsu, you both had the same power. Did you bond over that?"

"Hardly. We couldn't stand each other at first. I thought he was old-fashioned and preachy—just an interfering nag who was all reflexes and no brain. He thought I was a stuck-up kid. Looking back on it, I guess I was. It didn't matter to us what our powers were."

"I don't think meeting someone with a similar power would make much of an impression on Lunatic, either. He's a single-minded vigilante. I didn't come here to talk about my power."

Barnaby looked so disappointed that, despite himself, Yuri felt the beginnings of sympathy. Reflecting on the matter, he finally said, "You aren't like Kotetsu. You don't unearth details about people's private lives so you can do favors they don't want. I don't want to discuss my power—make no mistake, I _don't_—but you're not a man to do things from idle curiosity. Why has this become a topic for research?"

"Because your power makes you as close to Lunatic as I can get. I had hoped that learning more about your power—even some insignificant detail—might give some insight, or some clue, into how to get the better of him."

"You're not a Hero anymore." Yuri tried not to say this too harshly, but he couldn't keep the edge out of his tone. "Leave Lunatic and his ilk to the people who—"

"I _know_ that! Damn it, Yuri, I know that. It's not that simple. Lunatic isn't just another criminal. He's ... this is personal."

"What did he do to you that's worse than what he's done to the Heroes at large?"

"He tried to kill me." If Barnaby hadn't been wrapped up in his memories, he would have noticed how Yuri stiffened and edged away, unease creeping into his expression. "He tried to kill Ivan, he tried to kill me—he even tried to kill Kotetsu. None of _us_ are murderers. And I've never heard of Lunatic trying to kill anyone else who wasn't, unless you count Edward Keddy." Barnaby's voice went lower as he added, "Edward made a mistake, and I know he was convicted as a murderer, but I don't think what he did was really murder. Maybe it was murder in Lunatic's eyes, but that doesn't explain his trying to kill the rest of us."

"No," Yuri said softly. "I ... remember the reports all of you made of that incident."

"So do I," Barnaby said dryly. "I had to revise mine _twice_ because they wanted more details. Hardly anything was known about Lunatic back then, so when he took on Heroes directly, we were supposed to remember and report everything if there weren't cameras recording it. I think Kotetsu had to write his report seven or eight times over before the higher-ups decided he'd done it right."

"It was valuable information." Yuri's tone was still quiet. "As you say, very little was known about Lunatic then. Indeed, very little is known now."

"And that's why I'm asking you. I'm not a Hero anymore, but I can't let go of the fact he tried to kill me. I've got to know. I've got to try to find out more so that someone can get him behind bars." Barnaby's hand drew itself into a fist that trembled with the force of his anger. "I can't just drop this."

Yuri also found the memory of the incident disturbing. He'd never had the sweetest of tempers, but in his role as Lunatic, he was the embodiment of Justice. Only if he set aside his personal feelings could he be assured his flames would find their rightful targets. Edward Keddy's had been a marginal case, and that in itself should have served as warning that the boy was better left alone. Like Barnaby, Yuri was reluctant to call his action murder. At the time he'd made his escape, Yuri had told himself that Keddy had been given less than a life sentence as a nod to his youthful bad judgment, and when that mercy wasn't good enough for him, he'd proven he didn't deserve it—didn't deserve to live. Even then, however, Yuri had realized, in whatever passed for his heart, that he was rationalizing. Edward Keddy was a coward who had shown a reckless disregard for both Hero Academy rules and the rule of law, but he was no murderer: only a young NEXT who had wanted to fight evil and brought death instead.

The story was too familiar, and Yuri quickly turned his attention to the others he'd targeted that night. It might have been wrong to take out his frustrations on Ivan—poor little fool, he wasn't defending young Keddy _because_ of his past misdeeds—and it certainly had been wrong to take them out on Barnaby Brooks Jr. Brooks was also a fool in his own way, but not in a way that made it appropriate for him to perish in Lunatic's flames, and if Yuri hadn't been wrapped up in his own anger, he would have realized that and withdrawn. But his blood was up: he'd been foiled once, and his flames demanded satisfaction. When Brooks hesitated in the face of that blue fire, Wild Tiger had pitted himself against the flames of Justice. Being fought to a draw by the most idiotic of the Heroes had stung even worse than the damage to his mask. For weeks Yuri had told himself that the contest had come about only because Brooks couldn't keep his wits about him and mind his own damned business. Wild Tiger had struck the blow, but the fault was his partner's, and Yuri had spent far too many nights brooding over his sheer detestation of the newest Hero. Of course he smiled his unctuous smile when he encountered Brooks in the course of performing his job; that was what it took to cover the fury that the man's meddling inspired.

Then the affair of Jake Martinez had been smeared across Hero TV's gaudy screens, and young Brooks's personal losses along with it. Whatever Brooks's failings, whatever his misdeeds, he didn't deserve to have something so private and painful introduced as part of the circus that was Hero TV. The way Maverick had exploited Yuri's childhood loss was bad enough, but it was at least their dirty little secret, and Yuri had been a teenager when the business had begun. Barnaby had lost both his parents when he was so terribly young—too young for swearing vengeance, too young for anything but grief and fear—and Yuri suspected that Maverick played no small role in whatever course Barnaby had adopted that landed him the job of Hero. Yuri still resented the man, but he couldn't hate him, not after that, and his habit of mentally burning him in effigy was doused as if by a pool of blood.

Yuri yanked himself back to the present. "Why not go to Fire Emblem? Fire is his power too."

"It's not blue like Lunatic's. We know Lunatic is capable of hotter flames than Fire Emblem can produce. Lunatic also can use his flames to fly. Fire Emblem can't do that."

"I don't know why you think I can. I don't know why you think my power has more than the most superficial connection to Lunatic's."

"It's all I have to go on. _Can_ you fly like Lunatic, Yuri?"

Yuri had a feeling that lying, in this particular instance, could come back to bite him. He sighed. "Yes. Yes, I can. And before you ask why I didn't say so outright at first, it's because I. Do. Not. _Want_ to discuss my power. It is not a congenial topic. It never has been. I've gained some proficiency with it just to keep my sanity. I was afraid of it ... I was too frightened to release it for years. And finally ... I don't know. It was something that was mine when the rest of my life was out of my hands. It's _mine._" Yuri looked both defensive and proud. "Something I can call my own. I ... even so, it's dangerous. I'm not afraid of it any more, but it still has bad associations for me. I have no confidence I'm safe if anyone else knows about it."

"I'm sorry." Barnaby looked down. "It's hard for me to imagine it being such a sore spot, I guess because I was never ostracized for being a NEXT. But I know a lot of people have suffered just for having NEXT powers."

"Not just _have._ It's one of those things that crops up in human-interest bits of journalism, about children getting bullied for being NEXTs—or at least that's the excuse their tormentors use. Wasn't there something in the news just a couple of days ago about a boy who could reshape glass?"

Barnaby nodded. "I remember that. He was able to pull glass out of school windows and mold it onto the bullies' bodies. Last I heard, he'd been suspended for fighting because of that."

Yuri drew in a breath. "I hadn't heard that part. For defending himself? That's sad. Not surprising, but sad."

"Were you bullied for being a NEXT?"

"Do you think I was stupid? Nobody at school knew I was a NEXT."

Barnaby raised a placating hand. "It's not always a choice for kids. It can take a while to learn to control your power."

Yuri took a deep breath and let it out. "Yes, that's true. In any case, my power wasn't an issue when I was a child."

"When did it awaken?"

"Knowing that isn't going to tell you anything about Lunatic's abilities."

Barnaby smiled. "Point taken. Just one more question. Kaede told me that you were with her and Kotetsu on an asphalt roof. She said you made a really tall circle of fire to protect the three of you, and you kept it there for what, five or ten minutes?"

"I had things to think about besides looking at my watch, but it might have been five minutes. A very long time for Kaede to keep her arms in the air controlling fire, but not all that long in absolute terms. Anyway, why?"

"I wondered what kind of damage it did to the roof—if there was any danger of it collapsing under you because you burned a hole in it."

Yuri shook his head. "I was holding the fire."

"Holding?"

Yuri shrugged. "I don't have formal education in use of my power; if I'd gone to Hero Academy, maybe I'd describe it differently. I can—within certain limits—direct and control the flames. I was maintaining that circle of fire a little above the surface—not enough to let water pass, but enough to minimize exposure to heat for the surface under it. I should also note that the flames weren't that hot; all they had to do was boil water. If I'd needed real heat, it could have gotten complicated."

"But how do you do that? I mean ... how?"

"Hm. I don't know if I can explain it to someone who doesn't use the same power. I can tether the flames to my hands; that's easiest. If circumstances are favorable, I can do it with thought alone, but surrounded by water higher than my head, I didn't want to try that."

Barnaby seemed to be hesitating or mulling something over, and his words were a little breathless when he finally said, "Would you show me?"

"Oh, Barnaby, really."

"I'm curious."

"I can't very well do something like that in your apartment."

"Maybe a small version? Look, I've got this." Barnaby rose, crossed the room, and retrieved a glass end table that was clearly a companion to the coffee table: same two-shelf design held together by gold-tone legs. "I didn't really want it, but it came with the coffee table, and now I can't decide where I ought to put it. As far as I'm concerned, it's expendable. If it gets ruined, it's no loss to me."

"But a waste all the same. That's a good-quality piece of furniture, and it's brand new. Donate it to a thrift store if you don't want it cluttering up your digs."

Barnaby sighed. "Now that would be a waste."

Yuri slammed his fist on the coffee table, surprising both of them. "_You've_ spent your entire life surrounded by luxury and with no need to worry how you'd be fed or clothed or housed, but that doesn't justify wanton destruction. I know what it's like to study on a plank for nearly a month after smashing a desk I couldn't readily afford to replace." Suddenly realizing what he'd said, Yuri glanced to the surface his fist still rested on, but the coffee table was made of sterner stuff than his old desk had been, and it showed no sign of impact.

"Ah ... okay." Barnaby stepped back slowly. Not long ago he might have simply said, "Whatever," but Yuri had won his respect, and he was willing to show it. "How about this. Sterndesign has a no-questions-asked thirty-day guarantee for furniture. If you ruin this, they'll provide a replacement, and I'll donate that anywhere you ask me to. If you don't ruin it, I'll still donate this anywhere you like."

Yuri experienced a brief and somewhat dizzying temptation to grab Barnaby by the back of the skull and smash his face into the picture window, which he was reasonably certain would withstand the impact just as the coffee table had. Rich people! That a store would eat the cost of a ruined table rather than expecting the purchaser to do so made it no less ruined and wasted; it simply diminished the store's bottom line and encouraged frivolous returns.

Then he reflected that he'd been buying silk shirts, wearing bespoke suits, and driving a BMW for years, so he really had no business thinking uncharitable things about rich people. Barnaby at least meant well, and Sterndesign was so far in the black it made the Mariana Trench look shallow. Yuri also knew that such a return policy had real marketing value: lose a little on frivolous returns, generate goodwill that increases the customer base by a degree of magnitude. Sterndesign might cater to wastrels, but they made it a shrewd business practice.

"I can't believe I'm letting you talk me into this," Yuri grumbled. "But I suppose as long as I keep the flames small and tethered, it's safe enough."

"Would you show me what happens if you don't?"

Yuri stared at him. "You really don't give a damn if I ruin it, do you?"

Barnaby gave him a challenging smile. "That's right."

Yuri sighed. "All right, all right. One custom tabletop defacement coming up." Yuri rose, and Barnaby stood back further still to give him room. "Here's how I do the tethered version." He put his palms together, and as he pulled them apart, blue flames appeared between them, scintillated briefly, then flashed forward to hover in a ring less than a hand's breadth over the glass surface. "There," said Yuri. "I'm holding them. The surface will get hot—too hot to touch, but not hot enough to melt. It takes a lot of heat to melt glass. Now look—see the tethers? It's all right if you come closer, if you want to."

Barnaby was nearly back to the opposite wall. He came only a few steps nearer and murmured, "Wow."

Yuri nodded. "Now that it's ... established, I don't have to remain perfectly stationary to hold it like that." He closed one hand and let it drop to his side, then slowly walked around the table, still keeping the other palm facing the flame. "I have some ... hm, mobility." He turned, momentarily placing his body between his palm and the flame, and walked back the other way. "And since it's tethered, I can pull it down easily enough." Just for a moment, he straightened his fingers, and all the flames vanished. "Note the tabletop. No damage. I really don't recommend you t—"

But Barnaby had already taken a few strides forward, put a finger in his mouth, and _very_ quickly touched it to the surface of the table.

"Yes," said Barnaby. "Definitely hot."

"I should think so." Yuri contemplated the tabletop, while Barnaby watched him expectantly. "You really want me to go through with this?"

"Yes, really." And again Barnaby backed several steps away.

Yuri nodded and held his palms out again. "This is what happens when it settles on glass." Once again the flames shot forward, and a ring of flickering blue stood on the table's surface. "Let's turn up the temperature." His brows contracted, and the flames went pale at the base. There seemed to be a shimmer in the surface beneath them when the table made a loud CRACK and a fracture appeared, running from one side to the other. Yuri gasped, hands twitching wide. The flames vanished, and the two halves of the upper level fell onto the lower one with a loud clatter. Yuri stared. Barnaby chuckled.

"Damn," Yuri muttered. "That wasn't quite what I expected."

"It's okay."

"Since you considered the table expendable anyway, I suppose it is, but I'd hoped ... well, never mind."

"No, go on. What would you have done?"

"Melted the glass a bit," Yuri said quietly. "It's not as if I can sculpt it or anything like that. It just would have been more satisfying, I suppose, since the table would have been ruined anyway. On the other hand, this kind of damage is a lot easier to explain than something that looks like a blast furnace used it for a chew toy."

Barnaby smiled, though more as a reflex than because he found the idea of a blast furnace's chew toy particularly amusing. Walking back to the couch, he reflected that, in fact, he now had a good bit to smile about. It had taken some prodding, but Yuri had shared information about his power and even let Barnaby witness a tidy little manifestation of it. And it had been tidy—very tidy. Reluctance to discuss it notwithstanding, Yuri obviously liked using his power and had spent plenty of time refining his skill with it, something that also had to be true of Lunatic. Maybe he was like Lunatic in other ways. Maybe he—

Barnaby was just sitting down when he froze in mid-thought. Yuri hadn't come and taken tea with him to serve as some kind of living database, or as a stand-in for a crazed serial killer. It was a thing Barnaby still had some trouble wrapping his mind around, because the whole concept was so new to him, but Yuri had come ... as a _friend._ And even Barnaby knew that friends help friends, but making his interest in Yuri's power appear to be just a matter of intellectual curiosity—no, something even more innocent—had taken him onto the wrong side of a line.


	4. Pretexts, Lies, and Alibis

"Barnaby? Are you all right?"

Somehow Barnaby's head had made its way into his hands, and after a moment he managed to pick it up. "No. I owe you an apology."

Yuri's eyes widened, but he watched and listened attentively. When, after several breaths, Barnaby still hadn't pulled together any more words, Yuri finally said, "Barnaby, I'm willing to hear you out. Your explanation doesn't have to be a work of art."

"I was using you." Barnaby's voice was quiet, but the words were distinct. "I didn't think of it that way, but I was. I'm not sorry I asked you to come talk about Albert Maverick. I needed to hear that, and I'm grateful. But about your power..." He stopped, looking stricken. "I shouldn't have treated you that way."

Yuri looked rather taken aback, but Barnaby's sincerity was as evident as his distress, and Yuri finally said, "Asking to show how I use my power scarcely constitutes mistreatment."

"It does if it's not in good faith. I pretended I wanted to see your power just because it's interesting. No, just _because._ Then I realized I'd really learned something that way after all. Yuri, I don't want to be someone like Maverick, when he pretended to care about people and was just using them, and using the appearance of concern to manipulate them. I don't want..." For a moment Barnaby's eyes were closed as tight as his fists, but he opened them as he said, "If I'm going to have friends, I want to be worthy of their trust."

The word had been flickering at the edges of his consciousness ever since his evening on the town with Kotetsu and the others, but actually hearing it still made Yuri start. Now _friends_ echoed in his thoughts as a thing he'd put behind himself long ago—for a reason that no longer applied.

"I don't feel you've done me any harm," Yuri finally said. "Manipulating people is something we all do to one degree or another, and for once I'm not saying that from unadulterated cynicism. It isn't always a bad thing, either—it's no more than a white lie. But you're no Maverick." He frowned thoughtfully. "Though I would like to know what you learned by seeing me use my power."

Barnaby gave him a sickly smile. "Just how it made you like Lunatic. He enjoys using his power; he's good at it because he's practiced a lot. It's obvious the same is true of you."

"That's _it?_"

Barnaby waved in a clearing-the-air gesture. "I don't mean it's any kind of significant discovery. My point is, you were just doing something because I asked you to, and I immediately started analyzing it and thinking about how I could use it." Having spelled out his thought process, Barnaby realized how silly the whole business suddenly sounded—and yet he knew it wasn't, and that the spirit of something had been violated, though words for its nature eluded him.

Yuri wiped the incipient smile off his face; even if Barnaby was making a fool of himself, it was over a matter he found painful, and Yuri had no reason to hurt him more.

On the other hand, Yuri wasn't above exploiting someone's emotional vulnerability to keep law enforcement out of his hair.

"Well," he said softly. "That's the elephant in the room, isn't it? You couldn't suspect me of being Lunatic when you didn't know I was a NEXT, but now that you know about my power, it would be foolish not to consider the possibility. That's all the more true given my overlap with the profile that fits Lunatic's earliest crimes—I mean, the first ones connected to him: the three prison inmates in their cells, the one in the prison yard, and firing the abandoned church that the crime syndicate had adopted as a hideout. It was generally agreed that an insider had to be involved: that is, someone with the Justice Bureau, or law enforcement, or Apollon Media. Lunatic even managed to access to the Heroes' communication channel."

Barnaby looked stunned—perhaps a little sick—and Yuri quickly continued. "I'm certainly not going to confess to crimes I haven't committed, but to tell you the truth, I haven't given much thought to finding an alibi." _Because I'd rather not think about people knowing that I'm a NEXT, and that goes double for ex-Heroes with a grudge._ "Lunatic usually acted at night. In fact, most of the time he was known to be active, I was in my office working late." Yuri smiled self-consciously. "I kept absurd hours. Come to think of it, I seem to recall that once or twice you found me in my office rather late, when you needed information or advice from the Justice Bureau."

Barnaby nodded. He hadn't expected to get Judge Petrov's voice instead of his voice mail at such an hour, and learning that he was still at work had been a surprise.

"But of course," Yuri continued, "I don't have an airtight alibi for those times. Most of the building was empty, so there would generally be no witnesses to my presence, or to my absence. I think more to the point is the sheer logistical difficulty of doing what Lunatic did. If I had done that, I would have needed a perfectly secure cache for all that gear—the suit, the mask, the bowgun—and a place to change clothes unseen and then slip out into night." Yuri gave Barnaby a sudden, incisive look. "It would be highly inconvenient to accomplish that in any workplace." _Ask me how I know._ "It seems much more likely Lunatic worked from a residence somewhere in the Stern Medaille area. After those first few attacks, he apparently used publicly available information, including Hero TV live broadcasts."

Barnaby nodded slowly. "That's true. I mean, there seemed to be some agreement that that was the most likely scenario."

But he looked uneasy, and Yuri again had to suppress a smile. He couldn't stop Barnaby from seeing the possibility that he was Lunatic, but he could certainly present an innocent appearance that would act as a stumbling block to accusations or even suspicions—especially to someone who now felt somewhat indebted to him.

Yuri found himself wishing he hadn't stopped disliking the man. It would have made this easier.

"Anyway," he said, "it isn't necessarily abusing trust to draw conclusions from available information. I'd rather my power didn't become general knowledge, for reasons having nothing to do with Lunatic—although of course I'd also prefer that suspicion of being Lunatic not fall on me."

Barnaby looked sufficiently lost that Yuri wondered if he'd laid it on too thick.

"Would you rather I left?" Yuri kept his tone as neutral as he could. "We'd be parting on good terms, as far as I'm concerned, and having me here can't exactly be contributing to your ability to turn things over in your mind."

"No." Barnaby looked up, his voice now stronger. "I don't want you to leave yet, if that's okay. It's true there's a lot I need to think over, but ... well. I still haven't thanked you for showing me your power. And I promise, I won't discuss your past or your power with anyone without consulting you. Even if evidence emerges that points to your being Lunatic." Barnaby clearly felt uncomfortable about this final point; after all, by speaking with Lunatic before going to the authorities, he'd be giving a notorious criminal a chance to flee.

_Sometimes it's risky to trust people._

"And," he continued, "I'm not going to do what Maverick did. I'm not going to use people. You've trusted me enough to tell me about your mother and show me your power, and I'm not going to be like him, Yuri. You don't have to be worried about that."

"I'm not. I've got sixteen years and a law degree over the child I was when that started." Yuri realized it wasn't a particularly gracious response, and he was a little surprised that Barnaby took no offense.

"I know if my parents were alive and I had to support them, I would, whatever it took." He looked at Yuri pointedly, almost poignantly. "I have the impression you want to look out for your mother."

_I have to. She throws a mean right hook. Among other things._ "Of course I do," Yuri said quietly. "For all her self-sufficiency around the house, she'd be lost if she had to deal with the rest of the world—convinced as she is that Papa's still taking care of everything."

"You must feel unappreciated at times," Barnaby said softly.

Yuri shrugged. "She's my mother, and I had thirteen good years—before Papa's health began to fail. Of course I'll take care of her as long as she needs me."

Barnaby started to tell Yuri that he was lucky to have his mother but quickly stopped himself; if she was living in the past of more than a decade ago, Yuri might not appreciate the sentiment. "She's lucky she has you," he finally said.

Yuri didn't respond; indeed, he seemed not to have heard. He was in fact very pointedly _not_ patting himself on the back for taking care of her as well as he did when Barnaby asked, "Do you have plans for tonight?"

"No; not really," Yuri replied. "I think I'm done with moving furniture for a while." _I certainly hope so._

"Would you like to go out to dinner with me?"

Yuri looked at Barnaby with mild surprise. "This is ... unexpected."

"I thought we could have dinner and then swing by Sterndesign to exchange that table, if that's okay with you. Is there any place you'd prefer?"

Yuri shook his head. "I don't eat out often enough to be familiar with local establishments." He spread out his arms. "Obviously I'm not dressed for anything fancy."

Barnaby smiled as he rose and walked around the coffee table. "I don't know. That's a pretty classy shirt. Silk?"

"Yes, but it's not to be mistaken for black tie, or even business attire." Yuri also rose. "However, it's much more comfortable than those things I always wore to the office." _Even tucked in and buttoned up._

Barnaby was eyeing the end table, such as it was, and trying to figure out the best way to carry it, as he said, "There's a place downtown called Greentops that's been advertising its new topiary displays. The food's all right, informal dress is acceptable, and it's not too far from Sterndesign. Does that sound okay?"

"Certainly."

"I can get the main part of this table—could you get the top?"

Yuri chuckled. "And here I thought I'd finished moving furniture for the day."

"Sorry to inconvenience you. Can you handle those all right? Maybe I should give you a towel or something to wrap around them."

"No, this is fine." Yuri had carefully aligned the broken halves so he could hold them by their rounded outer edges, and he tucked them under his arm. His face held a bit of the smirk Barnaby remembered from their encounters in the halls of the Justice Bureau as he added, "Let's haul glass."

Barnaby hadn't expected that Yuri would make him smile the way Kotetsu sometimes did.

**Author's Note**

It may or may not be relevant that Stern Medaille (where most of _Tiger & Bunny_ takes place) is not part of downtown Stern Bild. (As shown on the map in _Tiger & Bunny: King of Works._)


	5. Dinner Companions

Yuri accepted Barnaby's offer of a ride to Greentops; it seemed wasteful for both of them to drive. Barnaby had a glass of rosé wine with his meal and wasn't sure why it surprised him that Yuri didn't do similarly. It wasn't because he was economizing for the sake of his host; Barnaby suspected, in fact, that Yuri was twitting him when he ordered filet mignon, and he was more amused than annoyed. But Yuri drank tea, frequently added sugar, and responded politely, though not at length, to the topics Barnaby introduced. They were seated by a window, so the conversation eventually strayed to the nature of some of the topiary work: was it meant to be purely abstract, or was it so highly stylized they couldn't tell what it represented? Yuri alluded to the blind men and the elephant and wondered if the problem was their perspective: they were two stories up, and the sculptures were perhaps meant to be seen from ground level. When Barnaby suggested that the harsh shadows of direct lighting were to blame, Yuri started reciting "Invictus": "Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole..."

It wasn't a long poem, but Barnaby was surprised that Yuri knew its four stanzas by heart. "Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, since you used to work with Heroes. It sounds very heroic."

"It sounds very adolescent," Yuri said dryly.

Barnaby shook his head, smiling. "Such a cynic."

Yuri bridled, but his expression remained friendly. "It is."

"Were you an adolescent when you memorized it?"

"Ouch. And yes, I was. It would be facile to claim that I was too young to know better. I went through a phase, I guess you'd say, of memorizing poetry, mostly as a pastime while commuting."

"So you like poetry?"

Yuri mulled at this while contemplating the juices that remained on his plate. "I suppose I did when I was younger, given that I memorized it, but I've never exactly read it for pleasure. There was a time when I found it an effective way to occupy my mind. It's not a passive activity, the way listening to music can be. My mind can't wander very far if I'm drilling myself on the lines I have and haven't learned."

"But you don't do that anymore?"

"My tastes have changed."

Before Barnaby could ask Yuri to enlarge on that statement, their server appeared with dessert. Barnaby didn't realize how intricately patterned the meringue on Yuri's Bombe Alaska was until the server began to spoon flaming liqueur over it, creating a veritable halo of blue fire that limned its contours in brown.

By the time the server had departed, the flames had diminished to a few pale flickers. Barnaby glanced from Yuri's dessert to his own and back.

"You're twitting me, aren't you?" Barnaby said dryly.

Yuri smiled. He might have been about to say something when the air between them seemed to explode in a shattering flash of white. Both men leaped back, Yuri with a half-articulated curse. Almost faster than the eye could follow, _something_ large had smashed through the window, flown over their table, and struck the wall opposite. Going by the pair of boots that could be distinguished amid the destruction to the gypsum board and wallpaper, the missile had been a human being who might or might not have survived the experience. Barnaby coughed and batted at the air—the new arrival's impact had raised a noticeable amount of dust, but through it he was sure he recognized—

"Sky High!" he exclaimed. He'd seen the windmaster's devastating encounters with solid objects on several previous occasions, usually with no worse result than damage to his helmet, but the man wasn't moving.

"Oh, fucking shit," Yuri muttered. At first Barnaby thought it was an understandable reaction to Sky High's possible injuries, but Yuri was looking out the shattered window. On the archway that formed an entrance to the topiary garden stood a human figure. He was lit from below, so shadows obscured many details, but blue flames rose from his outstretched hands.

While restaurant staff gathered around Sky High's still-unmoving form, Barnaby glanced back and forth, from Yuri to the dark figure he was glaring at. The motion must have caught Yuri's eye, for he turned his gaze to Barnaby, and at Barnaby's expression, his own shifted from anger to exasperation. "You mean, you still actually thought—"

"Sorry. I mean—I mean, it seemed possible—"

"It still is," Yuri growled, once again shifting his glare to the figure outside as he crossed his arms.

"What do you mean?" Barnaby stepped closer to the window. "I know the light isn't very good, but the flames—"

"Those aren't flames. Look again."

Barnaby did. The rippling glow rising from the figure's hands was indeed very flame-like, but now that he was observing it more closely, the movement struck him as a little too ... smooth, perhaps. It was something he'd seen before, especially in decorations around the time of his birthday, an effect created with lights and air currents and pieces of fabric.

"But how is he doing it?" Barnaby murmured. "And if he's not Lunatic ... why?"

"I suspect he's a copycat. Lunatic has his fans, but he's been quiet lately. Perhaps nature abhors a vacuum." While he was speaking, Yuri fished his cell phone out of his pocket. "Perhaps he's using a different NEXT power to create that effect."

Yuri found the Hero TV app on his phone just as a helicopter searchlight illuminated the interloper from above. "... but Sky High is not in evidence! This may be a new gambit for Lunatic—"

"... not Lunatic, you moron," Yuri muttered.

"—who has always targeted murderers before. If it is Lunatic, his outfit is a lot more understated—"

"Sir, we're asking all guests to evacuate." The interruption came not from their server but from another employee, a red-haired girl in what appeared to be a bartender's outfit.

"I'm Barnaby Brooks Jr.," Barnaby told her. "I'm going to help keep things under control until the Heroes can arrive."

The girl put a hand to her mouth, eyes widening, then turned to Yuri.

"I'm connected with the Justice Bureau," he told her. "I'll be assisting Mr. Brooks."

The girl replied with a hasty "Good luck, then!" and fled.

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. "Connected with?"

"Being an ex-employee is a connection." At Barnaby's unchanging expression, Yuri continued, a little snappishly, "I'm a _lawyer._ Verbal legerdemain is my native milieu. Or at any rate an occupational hazard."

"Yuri, let me keep an eye on him while you see if Sky High's okay."

Yuri would have preferred keeping an eye on the imposter—no, actually, he would have preferred drawing a bead on him with his bowgun—but Sky High now had him worried. The cluster of restaurant employees that had formed around him was gone, and there was no indication that he'd moved. Yuri had no great love for the Heroes, but he didn't wish ill to any of them, and certainly not to someone as patently innocent as Sky High.

Drawing closer, he could understand why the restaurant's staff had abandoned their efforts. Sky High had smashed head-first through a wall at floor level, and his arms were now trapped at his sides by the edges of the hole he'd made. There was no sign that he'd moved, so Yuri guessed that he was unconscious—or dead—and cursed quietly. At least the jet pack had gone out; Yuri didn't want to contemplate having to deal with that open flame and its propulsive power.

Telling himself that he was _not_ emulating Wild Tiger's fondness for destruction, Yuri planted several solid, heel-first kicks against the gypsum board above Sky High's back. The dust set him coughing, but he grimaced and fanned a hand in front of his face as he peered into the hole he'd enlarged, now using his phone for illumination. Apparently some sort of storage or utility room was on the other side of the wall; at any rate, the area was dark.

"Sky High?" While avoiding the jet pack—he could feel heat radiating from it—Yuri stepped over Sky High and into the darkness. He patted the back of the coat, hoping for some response. No point in looking for signs of respiration under such a bulky costume. Yuri carefully tapped Sky High's helmet, frowning. He'd been briefed on the Heroes' communication systems, but he'd never thought he'd actually have occasion to use the knowledge. At some point he must have found a communicator contact, for Agnes Joubert's voice emerged loud enough to make him start: "Sky High! Sky High, do you read me? Come in, Sky High!"

"Yuri Petrov here."

Agnes gasped. "Judge—I mean, Mr. Petrov! What are you doing there?"

"Mourning the loss of my Bombe Alaska!" Yuri snapped. "Your Hero managed to scatter broken glass over it when someone tossed him through a restaurant window." While following this line of conversation. Yuri was running his fingers around the base of Sky High's helmet, searching for a pulse. He was shocked at the relief he felt when he found one.

"He's inside Greentops? Does he have any injuries—wait, why are you the one responding instead of him?"

"I assume he's unconscious, but I haven't gotten inside his helmet. He's got a pulse, but I can't tell if he's breathing."

"Well, find out!"

"Give me a damned minute, woman! I'm a lawyer, not a locksmith." Having put his phone on the floor, Yuri was fumbling with the sides of the helmet, hoping Sky High didn't have any kind of injury that might be exacerbated if his head was turned. At last he found a catch that would open, and he pulled off the helmet as gently as he could. Putting a finger under Sky High's nostrils, he felt the faint warmth of respiration.

"He's breathing," Yuri told the communicator. "Unresponsive. I don't know about injuries; hard to tell under the suit. But he's alive."

Agnes gave an audible sigh of relief. "Where is he now?"

"Second floor. He's smashed through an interior wall. At this point, I don't think there's more I can do for him."

"What about Lunatic?"

Yuri gritted his teeth, then snapped, "That's not Lunatic out there. It's some copycat with a different power. I've got to go—Barnaby Brooks Jr. looks like he's about to jump out of a second-story window."

"_What?!_"

Yuri snatched up his phone, unmuting the Hero TV app so Mario's voice was once again audible. "And who should it be on the scene but Barnaby Brooks Jr.! As all of you remember, Barnaby retired as a Hero earlier this year, but it seems he's available to keep his hand in when an emergency arises. He and his partner Wild Tiger faced off against Lunatic on numerous occasions, always coming out on top, but now Barnaby has to confront this villain alone!"

Barnaby stood upright in the frame of the shattered window. Yuri couldn't tell whether his intention was to stand guard or merely to observe from the best vantage point available. Apparently a second Hero TV helicopter had made it to the scene, for one spotlight still cast the fake Lunatic's weird shadow on the ground, while another shone in through the window, blazing around Barnaby's silhouette and hurting Yuri's eyes. _And if this hurts my eyes—_

"Don't _blind_ the man like that," Yuri muttered. Perhaps Not-Lunatic made a similar observation: through the portion of the window not blocked by Barnaby's body, Yuri could see the dark figure leap off his perch and _fly_ forward, blue not-flames streaming behind him, and then there was a yellow blast—of fire. Barnaby flung himself back, dodging it as his opponent streaked in, following a trajectory not far from Sky High's.

Actual flames. A fake Lunatic might be behind them, but even though they lasted only a moment, Yuri could see that these flames were real enough.

"Don't try to fight me, ex-Hero." Not-Lunatic stood poised amid the tables. "Without your suit, you're no match for my power."

Yuri studied the interloper's outfit. The man wore goggles rather than a mask, but many other elements were understated and symmetrical echoes of Lunatic's suit, and Yuri wondered if it amounted to a critique. With the consciousness of _being_ Lunatic, Yuri had chosen an asymmetrical—that is, an unbalanced—design for his tunic and mantle. He was distracted from this line of reflection when his eyes were drawn to the texture on part of the cape. The newcomer had overlaid his outfit with the image of gray, feathered wings, and when Yuri noticed that the ensemble was topped with a head-encompassing gray hood sporting protrusions suggestive of a double-tiered crown, it hit him: this bastard had taken design elements from the statue of Lady Justice.

Insofar as it was possible, Yuri's dislike of the man intensified.

"You're not Lunatic," Barnaby said. Though he spoke aloud, the observation seemed addressed more to himself than to the interloper.

"My name is Angel," the man replied, causing Yuri to grimace and roll his eyes. "I have seen where Lunatic's acts fall short."

"So what are you going to do?" Barnaby's tone was wary.

"Get one of the impediments to justice out of the way," Angel replied. "The Heroes always toe the line drawn by weak laws that protect evildoers. When they've been eliminated, it will be possible to _fight_ criminals instead of coddle them."

Angel whirled, apparently ready to turn his flames on Sky High. Barnaby—using only regular speed, not his NEXT power—rushed him, but seemingly bounced off before making contact, flung not merely away, but into the opposite wall. He didn't go through it as Sky High had, but the crash of impact made Yuri wince, as did the concavity Brooks left before he crumpled to the floor behind a counter.

_Shit._ And then: _Wind. That is his power._


	6. The Lawyer Must Be Crazy

Angel gazed at Yuri. "Stay out of my way and you'll be safe."

Yuri narrowed his eyes. "And if I decline?"

It was pure reflex: the wind hadn't really hit him when Yuri let his phone fall to the floor and released his power from both hands. Doing so carried risks, of course: setting the place on fire, for one; revealing his power to the world, for another. Either was better than standing aside while Sky High was incinerated. And seeing the shock on Angel's face was worth it: the man needed a good kick in the teeth, and this unexpected turn of events apparently gave it to him.

The contest of wind versus jet flame lasted only a matter of seconds. In the suddenly quiet air, the two men regarded each other, for some time moveless except for their heavy respiration.

"What _are_ you?" Angel finally asked, voice hoarse.

"A lawyer," Yuri said simply. On reflection, he realized that he might have made a more circumspect response to someone who had a grudge against the rule of law. This time a blast of flame erupted toward him.

Use of his own power had made Yuri aware of the perils of fighting fire with fire. He dropped and rolled, then ran, crouching, toward the wall some distance behind him. Before he could achieve his goal, there was a loud thud, and the flame abruptly died. Barnaby had been down but not out, and he had taken advantage of his opponent's distraction to rush him again, this time with better results. Angel, however, was similarly down but not out. Barnaby held him tightly, and Yuri could see that the man was rising, not by using his limbs, but by using his power, the wind, to blast himself upright. If Yuri had seen Kotetsu and Barnaby's confrontation with Cis, he might have found the sight comparable: tables, chairs, cutlery, and food were thrown willy-nilly as Angel struggled to free himself of Barnaby's grasp. At some point Barnaby activated his power, but he was still flung about like a rag doll strapped to a bucking bronco.

Yuri studied the contest with half his mind while plotting a second line of defense. Angel's control was impressive; he didn't send blasts of wind across the entire room but moved powerful bursts of air over short distances, sometimes using it to slam Barnaby's body (under his own) into walls or floors, and at others buffeting Barnaby in an attempt to shake him free. The Hundred Power was more than equal to the task of keeping Barnaby clinging to his opponent, however, as well as preserving his bodily integrity in the face of impacts that should have broken bones or dislocated joints. Yuri had been watching with such intense fascination that until Barnaby reached it, he'd forgotten the one disadvantage of the Hundred Power: its time limit. Barnaby's five minutes came to an end, his body lost its blue glow, and once again he was flung away, this time stumbling over a broken chair to fall headlong on the floor.

The sound of breaking glass that accompanied the impact brought Yuri to himself. "Barnaby! Get out of here and give me room!"

Angel turned toward Yuri, who was standing behind an overturned table. "And what do you think you're going to do with _room,_ lawyer?" His struggle with Barnaby had taken him some distance away, and he walked slowly across the floor, stepping on silverware, not breaking stride to kick a salad bowl out of his path. In the background, Yuri could see Barnaby getting up, taking measure of the situation, then coming to a decision—and jogging the few steps it took to reach an exit. Yuri's posture must have betrayed his relief; whether Barnaby trusted him or was merely beating a strategic retreat, he was out of the way.

"Don't want your ex-Hero friend to see you getting the stuffing beaten out of you? I guess even lawyers have some pride. But I'm not letting you get the drop on me again."

"Fine," Yuri said softly. "I'm not afraid to take you on at close range."

"Really? You're standing there hiding behind a table, and you're going to tell me you're not afraid to take me on? Why doesn't a lie like that surprise me?"

"I haven't a clue," Yuri murmured. It was a good-sized table, and his hands were hidden from view as tiny flames formed on them—then shot up on invisible tendrils to explode like fireworks on every side of Angel's head as Yuri leaped over the table, now grasping a weapon that needed no NEXT power to wield.

"Wait, what's this!" Mario's voice crackled over the airwaves. "Was that a flash of blue from inside the restaurant? Uh-oh, now that's _smoke_ coming out, and as they say, where there's smoke, there's fire! Has Lunatic decided to set a building on fire in order to destroy one of the Heroes? As far as we know, Sky High is still trapped inside, although the civilians have been evacuated."

Barnaby looked up at the white cloud streaming from the broken second-story window, or he tried to: his glasses had been lost in the fight, and once his Hundred Power had run out, the world had become the blur that it always was to his uncorrected vision. But there was no odor of burning; whatever was puffing out that window, Barnaby doubted it was smoke.

"The glass hurts," a small voice said next to him.

Barnaby looked down. "Excuse me?"

It was a young boy with dark skin—Barnaby couldn't make out more details, even at such a short distance. "The glass hurts," he repeated softly. "When people break glass, it hurts."

Barnaby crouched to get closer to the boy's eye level. "What do you mean, the glass hurts? Does glass have feelings, like people?"

"Not exactly," the boy replied. "But it hurts."

Barnaby tried to focus, squinting briefly. In addition to not helping much, it made him look unattractive, and he smoothed his features as he made an educated guess. "You're Shawn Vaughn."

The boy who could reshape glass nodded, and Barnaby's face brightened a little. "You could fix that window, couldn't you?"

Even with his nearly nonexistent vision, Barnaby could see the boy's smile. "Yes. If I could get closer to it, I could make it better."

"Shawn, I'm sorry to put you in danger, but I don't think anybody else will be able to help my friend fight that man. I'll do everything I can to keep you safe. Will you help?"

"Sure," said Shawn, and there was an almost unsettling confidence in his voice. "I've handled bullies before."

* * *

><p>Yuri was well aware of the irony of the real Lunatic using a fire extinguisher against a fake one, and of a second irony topping that: he was using it not for its intended purpose but as a distraction, albeit a rather cruel one. Angel was only momentarily immobilized by flames erupting in his eyes, but that gave Yuri an opening to blast him with a face full of baking soda.<p>

Yuri had anticipated one of two outcomes: Angel would be coughing so hard he'd be effectually disabled, or Angel would still be able to move and would retreat out a door or a window—probably a window, given the better air circulation outdoors. Either way, he wouldn't be attacking Sky High, and Yuri could use his own power, if necessary, to keep the baking soda from interfering with his own breathing. Cutting off someone's air was a low blow, and Yuri knew it, but having seen what Angel could do against Barnaby, he'd concluded that giving the man any semblance of quarter could be disastrous.

What Yuri hadn't anticipated was that even while coughing furiously, Angel could exercise his power to good effect. In moments, great puffs of baking soda were exploding off him in all directions. Yuri backed away, using occasional hasty gusts of flame to direct the clouds toward the broken window, or at least away from Sky High, as well as from himself. Was the man just going to stand there coughing? Apparently he was, despite gout after gout of would-be suffocating powder. Yuri was able to maintain a barrage for a while, but trying to get closer yielded only the sort of buffeting Barnaby had gotten.

And then the fire extinguisher gave a soft _fft_ as a final trickle of baking soda sifted unpropelled to the floor. Angel was still breathing hard, but his teeth were bared in a barracuda grin.

"Guess I should've expected a lawyer to try a cheap shot like that," he observed as Yuri slowly put the fire extinguisher down. "Y'know, it occurs to me, maybe I've got my priorities a little screwed up—starting with the heroes. I think it was Voltaire who said, 'First, kill all the lawyers'?"

"Shakespeare," Yuri muttered. "_Henry VI._"

_I can't fight him hand-to-hand, not if Barnaby couldn't. Retreat and Sky High dies. Stand my ground and I'm the one who dies. I can't even conscionably kill him, not just for intent._

At which point a ball of _something_ flew in from stage right and smacked Angel hard, directly in the face, where it stuck.

Angel staggered, clawing at his head. Yuri stared, then slowly backed away, unable to parse what he was seeing but certain he didn't want to get caught up in it. Threads were flowing through the air—no, not threads, crystalline ropes or cables that spun as they massed onto Angel's head. Angel punched at the unyielding surface, then aimed an open palm at it. To Yuri's horror, flame spouted from his hand and licked over the surface—what would have been his face if the growing mass hadn't been in the way. At that moment Barnaby dashed in, grabbed Angel from behind and pulled his arm down and then behind him, sweeping the flame in a broad arc before it vanished. The crystal ropes spun on, avoiding Barnaby and whipping around both of Angel's elbows, locking them in place, then wrapping his chest. Although the stuff covering his goggles (and the rest of his head) was nominally transparent, Angel evidently couldn't see—at least, not well enough to navigate.

Angel activated his power, but since he was quite literally flying blind, he only managed to smash into a wall under the windows.

"I think that's enough," said Barnaby. "Shawn, he's not going to hurt you now."

Angel made a spasmodic attempt to rise, fell, and lay on the floor kicking, then arcing his torso as Shawn Vaughn—Yuri recognized him from the news photos—emerged from behind a tall planter and cautiously walked forward. Yuri could spare only a glance to observe him, as his attention seemed better devoted to Angel. Yuri's first apprehension was that the man might be able to escape after all—he had an impressive power—but watching Angel's struggles, Yuri suddenly realized that Shawn's thought processes might be a little too much like his own.

"He can't breathe!" Yuri exclaimed. Shawn didn't look nearly as concerned about this as Yuri would have liked, but Barnaby did.

"He's right," Barnaby said simply. "Can you get some of the glass off his face?"

Shawn was glancing back and forth, from Angel to the window he'd broken earlier. "Is it a good idea?" he asked warily.

"It's a very good idea," Yuri said earnestly. _The boy can't be ten. The boy can't be TEN. He's too young to be a killer yet, no one should be a killer at that age—_

"If he dies now," Barnaby pointed out, "we won't be able to learn all the things he's done wrong and fix them. Let's give him a chance to confess."

Shawn still looked wary, but he must have found the argument convincing; an amorphous mound of glass seemed to _slide_ off the front of Angel's head, and Angel took in a huge, heaving breath, then another and another, legs and torso gradually relaxing as he put all his energy into the simple act of respiration.

Yuri noticed motion in his peripheral vision and whirled, ready for another attacker—but it was only Sky High, finally conscious again, clumsily pulling himself out of the hole that he'd made and that Yuri had enlarged. Yuri hurried over to help, while Barnaby and Shawn discussed using Barnaby's phone to take pictures of the broken window before Shawn mended it, so there would be proof of the wrong that Angel had done.


	7. All's Well That Ends

"I am sorry about your glasses," Yuri said.

"That's the third time you've apologized for something that's in no way your fault." Yuri was driving them back to Barnaby's, since Barnaby couldn't, and Barnaby added, "I'm glad you know how to drive a car with a manual transmission."

"I wouldn't have anything else. Your car handles beautifully, by the way."

Barnaby nodded. "I like Hondas. Great engineering, and they last forever." After a little fumbling, he tuned the radio to a channel featuring Hero TV audio. His own voice was coming over the airwaves.

"... and after my power was exhausted, Mr. Petrov held the suspect at bay with a fire extinguisher for as long as he could, not only defending Sky High but saving the restaurant from going up in flames. Then—"

"I didn't want to correct you in front of the cameras," Yuri said quietly, "but that's not what happened."

Barnaby looked at him and turned down the volume. "But you did use that fire extinguisher. Everybody thought it was smoke coming out the window, but it was baking soda."

"Many years ago my father told me that a fire extinguisher is a great equalizer—and before you ask, at that time, my power hadn't awakened yet. I remembered Papa's advice. That's all."

"Whether you were using it to fight fire or not, you were defending Sky High."

Yuri waited for a traffic light to turn green, then said, "That was an intrepid young man you brought with you."

Conventional law enforcement had arrived before any Heroes could make it to the scene, and officers who were prepared for NEXT-powered mayhem found a strangely peaceful tableau. The dining room was a shambles, but without a scrap of broken glass in evidence. The window that had provided for the suspect's entrance was intact and flawless. The suspect himself was confined by glass molded to his arms, neck, and head. It was the same technique that had gotten Shawn in trouble at school, but here it had made him a crime fighter.

Barnaby turned up the volume once more, and this time it was Yuri's electronified voice that emerged: "... value of justice, and I recognize the importance of keeping the peace and upholding the law. What I did was no more than any citizen would have done on seeing any of Stern Bild's Heroes in danger."

The medics who followed soon after law enforcement found Sky High sitting on the floor, woozy and apologetic but in possession of all his faculties and thus quite willing to take an ambulance ride to an emergency room for checking over. When he learned that Yuri had been looking after him while he was unconscious, he had thanked the ex-judge—and thanked him again.

"For goodness' sake, Brooks, turn that thing off."

Barnaby complied, but he said, "I thought you made a good statement."

"As spokesman for the Justice Bureau's Hero Department, I've had plenty of practice." To himself he added, somewhat bitterly, _And the camera crews love me; I look decent for video without any additional makeup._ Changing the subject, he said, "At least we were spared a trip to Sterndesign."

Once everyone was able to get away from the police and the cameras, Barnaby and Yuri had walked Shawn and his mother to the parking area. Shawn's mother was a sous chef at Greentops, but because the establishment's childcare facilities were at some remove from the kitchen, the two had been evacuated to different areas, and she let him know in no uncertain terms how much worry the separation had caused her, particularly since she'd been in no position to check on him: she'd been frantically issuing vouchers to every guest she could find and offering assurance that Greentops would more than make good whatever disappointment they'd suffered this evening. "And then you couldn't stay put, and Mr. Barnaby had to look after you!" she'd exclaimed as they were walking through the parking deck. "And you couldn't even fix his glasses!"

"Mom, it's not my fault they're not made of glass!"

Barnaby chuckled despite himself. "Really, Mrs. Vaughn, I'm the one who should be apologizing. After all, I put your son in danger. He—oh, is this my car?"

"It is," said Yuri. "And Mrs. Vaughn, if I may suggest—Barnaby's lenses aren't glass, but he does have an item that is..."

Shawn had been delighted at a chance to redeem himself a bit in his mother's eyes—as well as further ingratiate himself with Barnaby—by putting the glass tabletop to rights. "It doesn't hurt anymore," he told them as Barnaby ran a finger over the now-seamless surface. Behind them, Mrs. Vaughn was shaking her head; she clearly didn't believe that glass experienced pain when it was broken, and equally clearly was tired of pressing the matter with Shawn.

"It's a beautiful table," she said. "You must have been upset about breaking something so nice. I'm glad Shawn was able to help."

"Actually," Barnaby told them, looking up with every appearance of seeing the world normally, "I don't have space for this, and I was going to return it. Would you like to have it? It would be a good memento of today's events."

"Oh, I couldn't—"

But of course she could, and Yuri, not trusting Barnaby's vision, carried it to their car. Noting Shawn's wistful gaze, he then gently prodded Barnaby into signing it. (Barnaby, no fool where fans were concerned, kept a permanent marker on him for such occasions.) All parted ways amicably, and Yuri resumed the role of guide dog to get Barnaby back to his car.

"It was just fabric and LEDs," Barnaby said musingly. He was referring to the "flames" on Angel's hands, part of his homage to Lunatic. "And a homemade flamethrower."

"And a most ingenious setup for it. He could control wind so expertly that he didn't need any sort of propellant. Just fuel—in a tank under that cape—and a spark."

"Hero TV saw that flash of blue," Barnaby observed. "Was that a good idea?"

"If you're concerned about a certain power being revealed, I'll merely remind you that Angel's 'flames' were the same color. If you're wondering about my motive, I believe you're aware of the efficacity of a flash bomb as a distraction."

Barnaby smiled wryly, remembering how Kotetsu had helped him with a last-ditch strategy against Jake Martinez. Then he said, "Do you think Angel could give Lunatic a run for his money?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't think Lunatic would agree with what Angel was trying to do. After that ... incident, he didn't try to kill Heroes. But I wonder if Lunatic would win against Angel if he confronted him."

Yuri hoped he would, but he could scarcely tell Barnaby that. "If Angel actually killed one of the Heroes, I'm certain Lunatic would target him as he would any murderer. I think at that point it would become a matter of reflexes. Lunatic doesn't always give warning before he strikes. If Angel didn't react quickly enough with a blast of wind, Lunatic's flames would be the last word." After a pause, Yuri added, "He is a superlative marksman."

Yuri never would have said such a thing of himself, but he could say it of Lunatic, knowing it was true.

"He still needs to be behind bars," Barnaby said, but his tone was abstracted.

Yuri thought about reminding Barnaby that Lunatic had saved his partner's sorry ass when Barnaby had been under Maverick's control, but he decided against it. The mere fact of Lunatic's doing such a thing had raised enough questions about who Lunatic was, who he knew, _what_ he knew, and what connections he had. No point in inspiring this latest antagonist with another potential lead.

Driving him home because his glasses had been rendered unusable, it was hard to think of Barnaby as an antagonist. They had both fought Angel. They had both...

"You lost your pudding, too," Yuri murmured.

"I did get a couple of bites, actually."

It was more than Yuri had gotten of _his_ fine dessert, and he took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot his passenger a dirty look. "Bastard."

Barnaby smirked.

* * *

><p>"Should I walk you to your apartment?"<p>

"No, that's okay." Barnaby was annoyed at Yuri's query, then annoyed at his own annoyance. He supposed that for someone with normal vision it was easy to compare needing to be driven home and needing to be walked from the parking deck to one's door. Even without his glasses, Barnaby could navigate well in familiar territory.

"Are you sure?" Yuri asked, still at his side, as Barnaby not-quite-stumbled to dodge a speed hump.

Barnaby chuckled humorlessly. "I'm fine. Really. Sometimes that one gets me even when I've got my glasses on."

"Just to the elevator, then," Yuri said quietly. Barnaby tried to read his tone. Maybe he was just trying to avoid being abrupt in their parting. No, something more than manners underlay Yuri's hesitance. Maybe he was putting off the return home to his deranged mother. However well he hid it, someone with a mind as logical as Yuri's had to find her frustrating to deal with.

For his part, Barnaby had had enough of company for the evening. He wasn't accustomed to losing fights. Back when his only option for research had been cruising every dark alley and shady dive in Stern Bild, he'd given his opponents a lot of bruises, a few dislocated joints, and even a broken bone or two in the process of proving that he was man enough to take on Ourobouros. Losing hadn't been an option, and luckily, most of his opponents hadn't been NEXTs. He knew he shouldn't take the night's events so hard: his efforts had given Yuri time to marshal a second line of defense, and while Yuri spelled him, he'd encountered the child who'd been able to perform the actual takedown. If he'd had his power suit...

Except it wasn't _his_ now. He wasn't a Hero anymore, and as a citizen, he'd gone beyond the call of duty. Even though he'd failed. Even though, really, he hadn't done that much.

He wanted to do more. It wasn't the first time he'd contemplated the prospect of becoming a Hero again—assuming the Justice Bureau would approve him, of course—but this time the desire was visceral, backed by experience rather than mere habit.

Barnaby had no difficulty spotting the button that summoned the elevator, or meeting the hand that Yuri silently extended to him as the doors opened. Even with his uncorrected vision, Barnaby could see how starkly Yuri's pale face, hair, and shirt stood out against the shadows. Yuri remained alone and unmoving when the doors slid shut and Barnaby's own blurry reflection replaced Yuri's blurry image.

Yuri gazed for some moments at the elevator doors, not really caring that the reflection wasn't good enough to enable him to check his makeup. The evening's events had bid fair to reveal darker secrets than those on his face. Even though he was out cold, Sky High had proven useful, for when he'd expressed his gratitude for Yuri's protection, Yuri had replied, "But I should be thanking you."

Sky High had recovered his helmet, but his puzzlement showed in the sudden sideward jerk of his head. "Mr. Petrov?"

"You don't remember? That criminal attacked me with his power, but I was uninjured because you defended me just in time with a powerful gust of wind. I'm very grateful, Sky High, that you overcame such a severe injury for even a moment to keep a civilian safe."

Yuri could imagine the blank stare under the eyeless gaze of the helmet. "I ... I suppose it's because I've had a head injury, but I remember flying out of control toward the window, and then ... nothing until he'd already been apprehended."

Yuri made a quiet _tsk._ "Perhaps your memory will improve. I can only assure you that you acted as you always do and protected a citizen in his time of need."

Yuri had no idea how Angel would react on hearing this version of events, but Barnaby hadn't been able to see their brief face-off, and Sky High _had_ been unconscious, making it a clear case of he said-he said. Yuri had no doubt that his own credibility would outweigh that of a Lunatic wannabe, in the event that the case came to trial. He frankly hoped that Angel already had a murder on his rap sheet, so Lunatic could obviate any possibility of a trial while still adhering to his principles.

Yuri knew himself to be a proficient liar, but he considered the trait a necessity rather than a virtue. This latest exercise of it led him to reflect, bitterly, that whatever else one said about Albert Maverick, he'd had a damned useful power. There were a great many things Yuri would prefer that people remembered differently or forgot altogether. And that led him to recall, not for the first time, something his father had said when his power was declining: "When I've had a bad day at work, Mr. Maverick can put my mind at ease."

At the time, it had made Maverick sound like a good manager. In retrospect, it made Yuri shudder. How could he possibly have spent a significant portion of the afternoon not only _thinking_ but _talking_ about Albert Maverick? Every recollection of him itched and ached, but as bad as having all that in his head had seemed, the prospect of voicing it had been insupportable. It was a thing so dreadful, so unfair, so _infuriating_ that the prospect of making it even more concrete by putting it into words was beyond the pale. Habituation had made the pain of that literally unspeakable truth easier to bear, but it had never made it any less. Even after Maverick's death, he had never contemplated breaking his silence. Who would he tell? What would he say? The questions had idly crossed his mind, not as realizable potentials but as remote theoreticals, much like _How would I kill myself if I decided to?_ or _Could I perform a job that involves saying, "Do you want fries with that?"_

Then Barnaby had called. And Yuri had, at least metaphorically, shrugged his shoulders and said, _Why not?_ The rest was history. Like Albert Maverick.

And as Yuri settled into the driver's seat of his BMW, the one he'd bought to celebrate his first judgeship, he realized he felt ... _decent_ about the whole business. Not happy. Not satisfied. He still had a great deal to be bitter about, as every glance in the mirror reminded him. But ... was there something to it when people called therapy "the talking cure"? Could just _talking_ to someone—not a shrink, not a mentor, just a sympathetic, interested audience—could that really make it better? Yuri would have scoffed at the notion, but he couldn't overlook a certain new clearness in his head, a falling-away of cobwebs that bound in all the resentment, like spider silk entrapping an insect. He'd spent an afternoon unraveling the past, and something could feel its wings again.

He turned the key, and soon the engine was purring. Unconsciously, Yuri curled his lips into the smile that had often graced them when he worked for the Justice Bureau.

Lunatic had never needed wings to fly.


End file.
